Stephen Morgan: From Quiet Loner To Accused Killer

Stephen Morgan

Fred Beckham / Associated Press

Stephen P. Morgan, right, and his attorney Richard Brown listen during Morgan's arraignment in Middletown Superior Court in Middletown, Conn. Morgan is charged with a single count of murder in the shooting death of Johanna Justin-Jinich, a 21-year-old Wesleyan University student.

Stephen P. Morgan, right, and his attorney Richard Brown listen during Morgan's arraignment in Middletown Superior Court in Middletown, Conn. Morgan is charged with a single count of murder in the shooting death of Johanna Justin-Jinich, a 21-year-old Wesleyan University student. (Fred Beckham / Associated Press)

The images could describe Morgan's alleged slaying of Wesleyan University junior Johanna Justin-Jinich. How police say he followed through on a 2007 e-mail to her that promised her "a lot more problems down the road"; how he'd written "Kill Johanna. She must Die'' in his journal before striding into the book store in Middletown where she worked and shooting her seven times; how he acted so stoic afterward that a cop arriving at the scene took his name and number and let him go.

But Taylor Free's observations come from a different time, when Morgan, a prep school graduate and former Navy petty officer from a large, church-going family in tony Marblehead, Mass., was drifting between New England, California, and Colorado, complaining about loud parties, existing on the fringe of the younger college crowd in Boulder and caring for his cat.

A time when Justin-Jinich, outgoing, attractive and a world away, was safe.

It was 2006 and Taylor Free and her husband wanted to move out of their apartment in Boulder, to another place in the city. Three months remained on the lease, so they put an ad on Craigslist for a tenant.

A 26-year-old man named Stephen Morgan called almost immediately. He said he was moving from Colorado Springs, that he'd sold a house and had broken up with a fiance.

When Morgan met Taylor Free in her kitchen in May of 2006, "I gave him a beer and said, 'Let's talk about my plan for the apartment.' I tried to warm him up," Taylor Free said, "but I couldn't. He was all business.''

He mumbled. Wouldn't make eye contact. But he was a model tenant, paying up front for the full three months.

"He had a cat he took care of, but I found him a little bit odd. He wasn't skilled socially,'' Taylor Free said.

He left in August 2006, and moved to an apartment building 30th Street in the center of Boulder, two blocks from the University of Colorado campus.

In the spring of 2007, he signed up for a couple of classes at CU, enrolling as a non-degree student, said university spokesman Bronson Hilliard. He barely left an imprint.

One neighbor at the complex reported that he'd lived next to Morgan for months and never uttered a single word to him.

NYU

It's unclear how Morgan went from a quiet loner to an accused killer, filling a journal with thoughts of killing sprees against Jewish people and Wesleyan students.

After that semester at CU, in the summer of 2007, Morgan traveled to New York City and enrolled in a six-week summer course on human sexuality at NYU.

Justin-Jinich, a popular, vivacious woman between her freshmen and sophomore years at Wesleyan, was interested in the study of female sexuality and took the same course.

This past Wednesday, while law officers were still searching for Morgan, Massachusetts police went to Morgan's family's home in Marblehead. His father identified the agitated, gun-toting man depicted in a book-store surveillance photo as his son.

James Morgan, a retired financier, told police his son was a quiet loner with few friends.

"James said that his son kept a journal and he has known him to make anti-Jewish comments," an arrest affidavit says.

Justin-Jinich, of Timnath, Colo., came from a Jewish family, and her grandmother was a Holocaust survivor.

And there were the e-mails. Thirty-eight of them, sent to Justin-Jinich while they lived in student housing at NYU. One of the e-mails said, "You're going to have a lot more problems down the road if you can't take any (expletive) criticism, Johanna."

Quoting sources, the New York Times said his e-mails became increasingly critical - targeting the clothing she wore and her religion. She filed a complaint with the New York City police, and both were interviewed by officers, but Justin-Jinich decided not to press charges, said NYU spokesman John Beckman.

Was it an obsession for Justin-Jinich that turned Morgan into a killer on a mission?

This was a man whose writings and deeds evoked, for police and Middletown officials, images of the Virginia Tech massacre.

Morgan's scrawled declaration to murder Justin-Jinich, described in a police affidavit, sounds like a command from a disembodied voice: "Kill Johanna. She must Die.''

On one of the last pages of the notebook found inside Morgan's car was an entry dated May 6 -- the day of the shooting. He mentions seeing all the beautiful and smart people at "Wes."

"I think it okay to kill Jews, and go on a killing spree at this school," he wrote.

Family Ties

Morgan appeared in court Friday, shoeless and shackled, accused of murder. But he was surrounded by family - his father, mother and two of his sisters.

Even after his son was led to jail under a $15 million bond, James Morgan, 72, still instinctively answered with pride a reporter's question about his family, saying that his seven children were scattered throughout the country.

When asked how his son was faring, the elder Morgan stopped himself and hung his head.

The courthouse, buzzing with media, was a far cry from sedate Marblehead, an upscale North Shore community of about 20,000 where the Morgan family has lived for more than two decades.

It's a sailing community, explained Michael Kattman, a neighbor of the Morgans on Elmwood Road. The Morgan house is a two-story Colonial with gray siding that the family built about three years ago after tearing down an older home on the parcel, Kattman said.

A basket of fruit and cookies sat on the Morgans' doorstep Friday.

Kattman described Stephen Morgan's parents as very quiet and to themselves. Besides a quick wave as they pull in or out of their driveway, "they don't interact much with the neighborhood or us," Kattman said, though he considered them "always friendly, considerate."

The couple regularly attend Our Lady Star of the Sea, a Catholic church in Marblehead, he said. A glass cross hangs in the front window of the Morgans' meticulously landscaped home. In front of the house, an American flag waves on a pole.

But Stephen Morgan wasn't a part of his family's life in Marblehead. Public records indicate he has spent much of his life elsewhere.

He graduated in 1998 from St. John's prep school in Danvers, Mass. At 19, in 1999, he enlisted in the Navy. After training, he reported to the guided missile cruiser USS Lake Erie, with a home port in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He was a petty officer 2nd class, working in the vessel's command center.

"That would be a fairly high-tech job,'' said Lt. Cmdr. John Daniels, a Navy spokesman, adding that he didn't "see anything negative'' in his four-year service record.

After leaving Navy in 2003, Morgan appeared to spend some time in Tiburon, Calif., at an address listed to his brother, Gregg Morgan, who declined to speak about his brother's background when contacted Friday.

An unnamed Navy colleague of Morgan's, quoted by FoxNews.com, said Morgan made disturbing and harassing phone calls and sent text messages to him following their discharge from the service.

In May 2005, Stephen Morgan sold a house he owned in Colorado Springs to a couple for just under $230,000. From there, he drifted from one apartment to another in the Boulder area. When he returned from the NYU summer course, he signed up for a couple of classes at the University of Colorado in the fall of 2007.

He registered for a single course in spring of 2008, but withdrew. Records show he maintained a post-office box in Swampscott, Mass., next to Marblehead, from the fall of 2008 through this past winter.

Stephen Morgan's father described his son's room at home as the guest room, court documents said. The elder Morgan told police he'd last seen his son on Tuesday night, and that he'd gathered his belongings and reported that he was bound for Newport, R.I.

Among the items he left behind, the affidavit states, was a full box of 9mm ammunition and an empty handgun holster.